Reuters: Regulatory News: Platts' Montepeque says EU oil pricing reform plan "intrusive"

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Platts' Montepeque says EU oil pricing reform plan "intrusive" Jun 10th 2013, 13:09 By Florence Tan and Luke Pachymuthu SINGAPORE, June 10 | Mon Jun 10, 2013 9:09am EDT SINGAPORE, June 10 (Reuters) - A senior executive of oil price reporting agency Platts called new rules proposed by the European Union for financial benchmarks "intrusive" and said EU investigators who have targeted Platts should act in a transparent manner. Jorge Montepeque, global director of market reporting at Platts, said a draft EU law aims to regulate oil price reporting agencies (PRAs), market participants who submit data to them and global benchmarks. Oil PRAs are opposed to external oversight and the tough rules - published last week - would threaten PRAs by imposing huge liabilities on oil publishers and market participants, say industry sources. "It's very intrusive and I would really recommend that users or participants in commodity markets ... work through your government channels to determine that's an environment that you want to operate in," Montepeque said at an oil conference in Singapore on Monday. Platts - along with smaller rivals privately held Argus Media and ICIS, a unit of Reed Elsevier - provides clients with prices assessed by reporters canvassing sources in opaque energy markets. Their assessments are used as benchmarks to settle physical and derivative deals worth billions in a $2.5 trillion market. The EU's draft law, which is unlikely to take effect before 2014, proposes that regulation of top benchmarks like Libor and oil be shifted to the Paris-based European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Oil price publishers were already under renewed scrutiny after European authorities raided the London office of Platts - a unit of McGraw Hill - as well as oil majors BP , Shell and Statoil, saying they suspected oil prices had been manipulated. Montepeque said the company still had no details about the investigation. "If the objective of the investigation is transparency then we will say why? We are already transparent. Then one starts thinking it has to be about something else but we have not been told what it is. We have not heard from anyone what it is. There are no details. There are absolutely no details," he said. "If the regulators are talking about transparency why don't they start by being transparent themselves? If there is an investigation make transparent what it is." Thomson Reuters, parent of Reuters news, competes with Platts, Argus and ICIS in providing news and information to commodities markets. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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